By now, most folks have heard about the uproar in Detroit where a promoter decided to throw a party where Lightskinneded womenses and Libras got in free. If you haven’t, please do read the article.

*smoke break*

You back? Well, welcome!

I’ve heard numerous individuals discussing this story and lots of folks have harassed this young man for his colorism and ignorance in deciding to add fuel to the color cocophony in this country by further dividing an already divided race of people who’ve been hurt enough by white people’s focus on skin color. Why–oh why–would we do it to our own.

Poor fellow. He’s gone and cancelled his party and listened to the cries of the men and women who speak out against such atrocities in our community.

They should all eat a dick and die.

From the heart.

It’s amazing how stories and intentions can get totally misconstrued and fucked the fucked up through the little game we call “Telephone”. Hell, read the headline to the linked article. I first heard about this through some club promoters in DC telling me about this “light-skinned party” in Detroit and how this guy was throwing a party for lightskinned people. No mention of the Lightskinned FREE that night or that it was a party for everybody. We actually then engaged in a discussion of what kind of self-hate party we could throw in DC.

We landed on “Light and White in White” — a party where only lightskinned people dating white people could come through as long as they were wearing white. We’d serve fried chicken martini’s with watermelon slices. It’s amazing the ignorance that’s possible when you get enough like-minded ignant motherfuckers in the same place. Viva la imagination!

Anyway, upon further review, it turns out this promoter, DJ Lish, was planning on doing upcoming parties in a series, if you will, that would include dark skinned and the nebulous “ain’t light but ain’t dark” or better known as the “caramel” sisters.

IGNANT SIDENOTE: You know we have too much food in America when Black folks take to describing our color in food terms. I ain’t never met an African who refers to him or herself as a Chocolate drop. Perhaps coicidentally, there’s some starving ass motherfuckers over there too. You get to calling yourself Choco-Latay and you just might get cannibalised. Too. much. food. in. America.

Let’s delve a little shall we? Was this fellow slightly misguided? Perhaps. Any time you decide to throw skin tone into the mix with los Negros, you’re welcoming criticsm. Face it, we’re still a bunch of people who are psychologically and literally paying for our God (or whoever you pray to) given blessings. And because of that, skin tone issues are largely a sparkplug for outrage.

Hmm, fuck that.

Let me rephrase this (which is the source of this dude’s problem). Ever since the slavery days, lightskinned and dark skinned folks have been at odds. Sometimes blatantly, sometimes latently. Think about the barbs thrown our way. People ALWAYS resort to using somebody’s skin tone when making disparaging comments.

“Lightskinned bitch thinks she’s better than me!”

“Dark skinned motherfucker lookin’ like midnight!”

And we wonder why white people do it.

Thing is, implicit in both of those statements lies the problem. There’s a clear ideology about how skin tone plays into society. Light is right and dark is, well…dark. And we’ve all bought into it in some way shape or form. It’s a sad state of affairs but its unfortunately the state we live in. It’s like living in Montana when you know California exists.

It’s like rain on your wedding day. Oh wait, that’s actually ironic.

Or not. Am I the only person who got slightly peeved that she called so many things that weren’t actually ironic, ironic? She kept noting coincidences, not ironies. Though I suppose saying, “Now isn’t it a coincidence” doesn’t have the same punch. But I digress.

Dark skinned people constantly get the short end of the stick. And it sucks. But you know, that’s not really lightskinned people’s fault. It’s white people’s fault, but much like Black-on-Black crime…

…we STAY robbing the wrong people.

Yes, Black people stay losing.

So here comes DJ Lish, who from my perspective only made one real mistake.

He threw the wrong party first. But let’s think about this. How many of you people are party promoters? And for those who’ve been doing it for a while, how difficult is it to come up with something that actually draws people in? Promoting sucks. There are really not that many things you can do as a promoter to really draw folks in short of random gimmicks. Enter DJ Lish.

And he had a good idea. It’s a winner, a gimmick catered to the very women most men harp on in the media. Light chicks.

“…and all the wavey light skinned girls is loving me now…” ~ Jay - Z “December 4th”

Wrong or right, it’s true. And I’m sure a lot of light skinned reading chicks probably hate the lightskinned-points they get, but they sure don’t mind the attention. But the point is promoters need gimmicks to draw people in. Promotion is an ugly game.

So he picked the Light and Libra party. Bad move bucko, but not a bad idea. You should have just started with the Sexual Chocolate first because niggas hate color schemes, but don’t mind Chocolate as much as we mind Light-skinned preference. We actually love it when people of darker-hue receive recognition.

Read: India.Arie’s fanbase.

I think the outrage wouldn’t have been as loud for that party. Color me stupid and call me Renee but I think that our color issues intra-racially are far more skewed towards wanting to knock light-skinned “bitches” down a peg or two. So of course, any party that celebrates and benefits a woman’s light-skinnededness is going to catch hell. And the purveyor is going to catch wreck.

I wish this DJ would call me because I’d love to tell him not to listen to the motherfuckers who called for his head and have decided that he realizes he was wrong and should work on being a better person.

Fuck them.

Is he naive? Clearly, he thought he was just going to throw a party that allowed light-skinned chicks to gain entry free one night, but what he got was national attention and articles and phone calls. Playing with skin-tone is playing with fire, bucko. You can still play that game but you have to play it smarter. It’s actually a win-win. You throw that first Sexual Chocolate party and you can’t NOT throw the other two.

That’s how you stay winning.

But this dude has been reprimanded and scoffed at and I think that’s total bullshit. Not a bad idea, just bad judgement and decision-making on his part. Intra-race issues will be present forever, but everything ain’t as terrible as we want it to be.

Except the “Light and White and White” Party…there’s just no excuse for that one.

Word to Al Sharpton.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 17th, 2007 at 10:31 am and is filed under In The News, Mirrorism, Welcome to Blackness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.